Last one out, please turn off the lights

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200803171443DOWJONESDJONLINE000746_FORTUNE5.htm

 

I will stand in a soup line before I will work in a "content center."

 

Fuck that. What we do has value. If department store ads won't pay for it, someone else will. We just need to figure out who.

 

Or, after so many layoffs, it eventually hits the point where on a smaller-scale, newspapers will work.

 

You have the right idea, right there. Word for word. The task is not to "rethink" the content; the task is to "rethink" the business model.

 

I was having a pretty good day before I read that. According to the article, some journalists share some blame for being laid off, those that didn't want to change to online deadlines. Maybe being out of work for a while will make them realize online deadlines aren't so bad.

 

Online deadlines are fine and the need to be first trumps all else (including, too often, the need to be right).

But what about the need to write? As we work on this 24/7 news cycle, with all its platforms (online, print, audio, video), do we really allow enough time to actually write stories that are worth reading? Seems like most of us are becoming wire service shovelers, with only an elite few allowed the time and freedom to "craft" the words anymore.

I got into this business in order to write for a living, with reporting a necessary function of that. Feels every day like we're wringing the writing out of it. We're information providers but not entertaining writers anymore. (Self-indulgent, navel-gazing blog entries don't count, IMHO.)

In broadcast, they bitch about a lack of time to report. We're supposed to report but we lack the time to really write:

Here's evidence that CNN's Crowley may be working too hard
St. Augustine Record
"I was so sleep deprived once that I found myself brushing my teeth with moisturizer," Candy Crowley told a Flagler College audience. "It's never-ending. But I can only last a while doing that. Eventually I hit a wall." She also said that with so many avenues to "put our journalism -- radio, TV, podcasts and blogs -- what suffers is reporting. You almost don't have time to figure [a story] out before you're on the air with it. What we're actually missing is substance or context."

 

What is a full-time "associate"?

 

We'd better think quickly.

 

I love how some journalists in the article were blamed because they weren't willing to adjust from a print-oriented deadline to a Web-oriented one. Maybe if they had time to do so, instead of just having the Web work piled on top of their print workloads, they would have been able to adjust faster.

On the other hand, my shop tried to have a reporter work a 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift five days a week for Web and print work. They went through like, three reporters in a few months, and now, I believe, they have their reporters alternate shifts to cover the morning one.

 

The problem is two-fold.

1. Management expected this change to cost them nothing. And didn't want to invest in Web reporters, etc.

2. Reporters didn't always understand the significance of the Web. An extremely well-known sports reporter for one of the major papers in the country told me a few years ago that writing for online-only wasn't worth his time. Now, I'm being told he's really excited to write something on a daily basis for the Internet.

Everyone knows how important the Web is now but the industry might be a day late and a dollar short.

 

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